Schools

Morgan Hill Unified School District showed a slight decline in state student test scores this year and maintained a cavernous achievement gap between Hispanic students and their classmates based on the 2017 Smarter Balanced Assessment Results released last week.

Casino Fajardo, 37, is the Director of Construction and Modernization for Morgan Hill Unified School District, heading up the $198 million Measure G capital improvements projects throughout the district. He currently resides in South San Jose (close to Martin Murphy Middle School). He attended Nordstrom Elementary School and Britton Middle School, and graduated from Live Oak High School. He has two young children: CJ, who is currently a kindergartener in MHUSD, and Benji, who will start pre-school in the area shortly.

Voices College-bound Language Academies, which includes a Morgan Hill school among its three sites, was approved for a $2.7 million federal grant, according to an Oct. 3 press release.

A presentation on Morgan Hill Unified School District’s “Be Seen and Heard” sexual abuse training for students will be introduced to the board of education at the Oct. 3 meeting.

My name is Japheth Negash, and I am a junior at Ann Sobrato High School. I’m 16 years old and have been a resident of Morgan Hill for my entire life.

School officials must mine their way through $5.5 million in budgetary cuts unless they can generate more revenue to offset the district’s deficit spending that began last year, according to a “Right Sizing the Budget” presentation at a board of education meeting earlier this month.

After an extensive national search, the Board of Directors for South Bay Regional Public Safety Training Consortium appointed Linda Vaughn to the position of President/CEO at their Sept. 21 meeting, according to a Sept. 21 announcement.

This past Monday, Sept. 11, Sobrato Future Farmers of America continued a tradition that started in 2010: creating a memorial to honor the victims of the terrorist attack in 2001.

Bringing an anti-bullying message along with him to El Toro Elementary School, Harlem Globetrotter Anthony “Buckets” Blakes entertained local students with his flashy basketball skills at a pair of Sept. 14 assemblies on campus.

A 40-minute board study session on Naviance, a college- and career readiness platform that helps connect academic achievement to post-secondary goals, is planned between the Sept. 19 closed and open session in the upstairs conference room of district headquarters.